“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into”

—Jonathan Swift

___________________________________________________"The Democrats have moved to the right, and the right has moved into a mental hospital."- Bill Maher___________________________________________________

"The city is crowded my friends are away and I'm on my own It's too hot to handle so I gotta get up and go

It's a cruel ... cruel summer"

Friday, May 23, 2008

Ten years ago, I wrote a poem titled "The Senator from South Carolina". It was a "tribute," if that's the word, to Strom Thurmond (still kicking at the time), but it was really about the great, tragic and comedic history contained in the institutional memory of the Senate: something that would be lost if the well-meaning but misguided backers of term limits ever had their way.

We are, perhaps, preparing to lose another connection to the past. There will be a time, hopefully later but perhaps soon, to think back on Kennedy, but for now it might be a good time to revisit "The Senator from South Carolina":

My head was howling; ten times ten-thousand memories.I walked down halls festooned perverselywith trappings of Power. Weak, small-minded men,who wore their Modern garments-- those three-piece suits!those power ties!-- like weapons. How I spitout these words. They do not nourish me.I was born in a cave six-thousand years ago,helped build society in an Age of Fear.I knew Romulus. I knew Remus.And when confronted with the simpering Visageof your "politicos" (how I loath that word), I weep. I weep for your world.I have to laugh at Modern Sensibilitiesyou wear so proudly like a shield with a Crestof Thorns, a foolish coward behind it. Listen:I spoke for gods in less egalitarian times.I used beheadings to stifle dissent,had men drawn and quartered, laughed at their pain,smeared their blood on my face and condemnedtheir souls to Hell. I am limitedby Democracy, its creeping mediocrity.I, who have watched the greatest of mountains erodenow walk in shadows. I am a Player, who struttedhis sixty centuries, upon that well-lit stage. I will be heard forevermore.

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